Despite the abundance of colleges and universities, and the continuing investment by the state in the Nanotechnology Center, median incomes in Albany NY, which also has an advantage as the capital of the state of New York, have not moved since 2005. The capital area, with a population of 1.1 million, is the 38th biggest metropolitan area in the United States, and its median household income is 63080. We should expect to find about 1000 dental offices in the Albany area – our research to date has focused on Albany itself, and its immediate northern suburbs. Here we observe an interesting phenomena – we are aware of the challenges of dental marketing in an urban area – upstate New York is particularly challenging, as the traditional areas, along the old Erie Canal, for example, are still in pretty rough shape, having never really recovered from the post war, WW2 that is, decline. The industrial activity in cities such as Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica and Albany is a fraction of what it used to be, and industry has certainly deserted the inner cities, which are now inhabited by government, hospitals, universities and parking lots- none of which pay taxes. Dentistry subsists, but dental marketing is on life support. At Denta+media, we find that such locales are a great opportunity for a local events marketing strategy, as worthy causes abound, and we look forward to reporting on the development of such a strategy as it plays out in the Albany area. For the moment, we find a lot of very old fashioned marketing deployments across the board, and in Albany itself, only one office scores higher than 20 (Albany Braces). Tellingly, we did not find a single dedicated dental office marketing coordinator in the Albany area – a very commonly filled position in cities such as Austin, Houston and Dallas… our Denta+media research, which you can find on Denta+leads, has identified thousands of marketing coordinators in the 100,000 dental offices researched to date.

Albany Braces is now engaged in a local event marketing strategy, and is using social media to communicate some of what they are doing – primarily on Facebook. Twitter is also a great medium to engage a local audience, bring them out to your event, and to tell the story of your benefit. Albany Braces also has an Instagram page, but we don't find any pictures of their events stories on Instagram – something to look forward to. Ubiquitous in the Albany area with four offices, Albany Braces is way ahead of the pack in the field of advanced dental marketing.

The other Albany dental office of note is The Smile Zone, distinctive in its branding with a very compelling logo. The offices receives excellent reviews on Facebook, the office story is portrayed through social events- we recommend that the social media story center around the theme of local events, community involvement and charities. The Smile Zone is certainly miles ahead of the completion… LinkedIn is the right place to bring up professional themes.

In general, we can see that the advent of a purposeful local events marketing strategy would find fertile ground in Albany, NY.